A Boston College sports blog capturing the highs and lows of being a BC fan living 1,000 miles from Chestnut Hill.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Hockey to St. Louis and other links

The good news: BC hockey earned a top seed in the NCAA Tournament. The bad news: it is the No. 1 seed out West. The team will take on 4 seed Colorado College Friday night on ESPNU. The winner of the game takes on the winner of Michigan-Nebrask-Omaha on Saturday. Closer observers of the team and college hockey predicted that BC would be sent west. Although they weren't surprised, they remain disappointed that BC didn't do more to host a regional or end up in New Hampshire. St. Louis doesn't seem that bad to me. No team will truly be home. Of course the distance will keep some of the bandwagon fans from getting involved.

29 comments:

I think the distance will keep "most" fans from getting involved as travel costs continue to climb and the wholly unfair PWR gave the committe the ammo it needed to try their best to ensure that BC does not repeat. Aside from the distance, BC's bracket is tough. Yale's bracket is a joke, UNH's bracket is tough, but it has two HE teams in it, no doubt MC and UNH fans will fill the place. N. Dakota's bracket is tough, only in that it features Denver. So UND fans whine about it. Big deal, you get to play close to home! Also, the placing of the two topped ranked teams on the same side of the bracket was no accident. The "UNH" clause, as I like to call it because UNH is the only school that ever benefits from it, gave the committe what it needed to help the ECAC get to the final. So, BC gets jobbed, and the tourney makes a little less money. Par for the course with a rating system as flawed as the PairWise.

cant say that i know anything about college hockey but can someone explain to me why Miami (OH) didn't get the 1 seed in St. Louis and we would get the 1 in NH? This would seem to make more sense geographically for both schools. Also, how does Miami end up playing a road game as a #1 seed?

Andrew-There is a rule that a host school must play in the venue where it's hosting. Thus, UNH must play in Manchester. There is also a rule that prevents intra-conference matchups in the first round of the NCAA's. If BC played in Manchester, we would face UNH (a member of our conference) in the first round, because we are a #1 seed and they are a #4 seed. So, BC had to go elsewhere, and they switched us with Miami.

Anyone who cares about hockey should be contacting the athletic department about this. Year after year, BC gets jerked around by these inane hosting rules. Let's show them that the best program in the country deserves some more support - BC NEEDS TO HOST NCAA HOCKEY REGIONALS AND THEY NEED TO HEAR US. Leave a note on FB facebook.com/BostonCollegeAthletics or call the office: 617-552-4681

Zudnic-I admire your enthusiasm, but given that BC has played in the regionals in Manchester, Providence, or Worcester every year that we've qualified for the NCAA's for the last decade (until this year, of course), I don't see much of a problem here.

In contrast, for example, Miami has been sent our east to Manchester several times in the last few years alone. They are the ones getting "jobbed."

BCDouble, don't forget that BC got sent out West a couple times when it was starting this momentous run back in 1998. By momentous run, I mean that with a couple exceptions we have been an NCAA contender almost every year. So Miami has to go out a few times early in their ascendancy. I'm not saying I agree, but its par for the course with this bizarre system. BC may "need" to host a regional, but what really needs to happen is to not have a system that benefits people for nothing, but rather a merit based system from on-ice performance. Sounds almost American doesn't it? Instead we will deal with this East German system of fairness conceived by somebody who spent to much time in net without a helmet. No offense to any East Germans in the room!

Not quite sure why you think UNH is at fault for this "clause" as you call it. Every school knows that they can host a regional if they want. UNH is just taking advantage of the rule every other year, that seems like an intelligent decision to me. Also UNH has been on the other end of that ruling too when they were a 1 seed in 2008 and were sent West. I do agree that conferences should host regionals as others have said just to avoid this problem. The Pairwise isn't perfect but it's better than basketball selection which follows no standards from year to year.

What needs to happen is for hockey east to host the regional as opposed to one individual school. the wcha does this (and their fans still complain, so I don't know if it would really be better).

It's tough to trust a system by which it would have been better for us to have lost to unh in the Hockey East finals than beaten Merrimack. Under that scenario, UNH would have been a 3, we'd have been a 1 and we would be playing in Manchester...most likely not against UNH since they are one of the greatest choke artists of all time.

The problem is that the system used here is too codified and too objective. It's purely numbers-based (PWR rankings). The hockey selection committee has very little leeway to make adjustments. They assign seeds, assign regionals, tweak for first-round intra-conference matchups, and where possible they can tweak for attendance...but that's it. And attendance-related changes can only happen as long as the other aspects are not thrown off.

There is one seroius issue lurking beneath all of this: ticket prices. It costs something like $45 per ticket to the regionals. That's absurd. As a result, attendance has been steadily declining over the last decade. Thus, the NCAA has the host school rule in an effort to help boost attendance, figuring that, for example, UNH will fill Manchester with its own fans.

If these games were more affordable, casual fans would come, and the NCAA could easily do away with the host school rule.

I am writing to express my disappointment at the NCAA’s ongoing policy of raising ticket prices for the NCAA hockey regional games, thus driving away fans. Here are the ticket prices and attendance figures from the last five NCAA regional games I attended in Worcester. Each game was a regional final featuring Boston College.

Clearly, this problem is not unique to Worcester; there were only 3,204 fans in Fort Wayne and 3,737 in Albany for those regional finals this year. Even Minneapolis – a hockey-crazed city with an 18,000-seat rink – only drew a little over 7,000 fans.

In this economy, fans are choosing to stay home rather than spend hundreds of dollars to watch a college hockey game. What is the NCAA doing about this problem? Are there plans to lower ticket prices next year? If not, are there at least plans to introduce tiered pricing based on seat location like every other major sporting event?

That rule would be surprising to me. I'm pretty certain that every year you are on campus is a year of eligibility, regardless of whether you are on the roster. But one of Cahill's years of not playing would count as a red-shirt year, thus he'd have one year left.

Sid Vicious got four years because he started as a sophmore and his freshman year was treated like a red-shirt year.

Caroline-No. Those are per-day prices. Admittedly, you do get two games for the price of one for the first round, but then you only get one game for the second round. In other words, it costs about fifty bucks to watch both games on Saturday, and then another fifty bucks to watch the second round game on Sunday. So let's say you and a friend want to watch BC play in the first round on Saturday, and then they win and you want to see them play again on Sunday. Total cost: about $200.

For comparison, you can see the two Hockey East semifinal games on Friday night for and the title game on Saturday night for $17.50 per person, per day (about one-third the cost of attending the NCAA regionals).

How can the Big 10 get an auto bid with only a 6 team conference? That seems absurd, 1 and 2 seeds would only have to win 2 games to make the NCAAs? That seems incredibly unfair to the rest of the conferences (I don't think anyone else has less than 10). With only 16 teams, its a tight tournament to make anyway, throwing another autobid into the mix is ridiculous.

Rob, last year College Hockey America (now defunct) had an autobid with only 4 teams in the league.

As far as Cahill goes:

"A student-athlete who is enrolled in a graduate or professional school of the college or university which he or she previously attended as an undergraduate student may participate in intercollegiate athletics, provided he or she has eligibility remaining and is within five calendar years of initial full-time collegiate enrollment for Division I and within the first 10 full-time semesters of collegiate enrollment for Divisions II and III"

Thanks Ry, appreciate the insight. Obviously that's even more ridiculous, but there needs to be a rule change here. Make at least an 8 team minimum for an autobid. You should have to play at least 3 rounds in your conference tourney.

The Big 10 will provide an influx of cash for College Hockey, probably a much needed one. It's hard to give them the finger when you need what they have. Also, they are going to poach quality teams from WCHA and CCHA. Imagine the CCHA will become like the ECAC in terms of conference power after this.The Big 10 (as I see it):MichiganMichigan StateOhio StateMinnesotaWisconsinNotre DamePenn StateDirectional Michigan (N or W, or both)

That's 8-9, plus they will probably make a play for Miami, (why not) and since the rest of Michigan is on board (let's face it the Big 10 lives to support Michigan and Ohio State) they could probably make a play for Lake State and Michigan Tech.It would be hard, if not foolish, to deny a conference with this many accomplished programs a seat at the table. You would have the program with the most NCAA titles (Michigan) in a non-qualifying conference? Not going to happen.

I thought I heard that the Big 10 wouldn't invite any sports in for hockey only because they don't want to have to slice off any of their huge revenue. In other words, they don't want to share revenue with teams who don't contribute via football and basketball. Hence I would imagine many of the teams in your (Andrew's) Big 10 wouldn't actually be invited.

My inisght is purely off forums and USCHO articles though, so perhaps I am wrong. I just hope the addition of the Big 10 and the loss of Michigan and Michigan St doesn't doesn't kill the CCHA and many of the smaller hockey schools like Ferris State, Lake Superior State, etc.

Anfield, you and the articles may be right, although I am sure they could craft something that would keep their cash cows safe.

They could also make a play for UN-O since they have Lincoln in for the other sports. There are a lot of different ways this can go. Illinois should start a program or Northwestern, really. Iowa? probably not.

This is a good thing for Hockey, the fact that a conference for Football and Basketball is interested. The CCHA becoming the MAC of college hockey may be the price, but it is time for College Hockey (as the NHL nose dives) to become the 3rd major college sport.

I hope you are right. With so much unknown, I admit I might just be seeing the negative side of things. Since I love college hockey, I certainly hope it takes a more prominent place where I think it belongs. I just feel bad that programs like Lake State (who won titles in the 90s I believe) may suffer. Maybe they will be able to stick it out though and if the Big 10 does improve college hockey the smaller programs will also reap some rewards.

The idea of any of those schools starting Hockey programs is more preposterous than BC competing in the ACC, which the "experts" said we couldn't do and then we beat UNC twice in one season, woops!

Late 80's/Early 90's was an interesting time for college Hockey as Harvard was relevant, Lake State was a juggernaut, Maine was cheating, and BC was actually fielding some decent teams, they just had playoff woes (see UNH).

The addition of a SuperConference may dampen that, but the main reason that College Hockey has gotten better is that more students are finishing school, as pro contracts dry up and even if they are really good, people see the ephemeral NHL/AHL career needing a degree behind it, especially as a College degree becomes more like a HS Diploma these days.

Schools like Lake St used to benefit from the Canada connection, but as hockey players choose a school for degree and college life, it's no wonder BC,BU,Yale,Cornell,Michigan and Denver have benefited. UND is more like a calling, the guys who go there have wanted to go there, their whole lives and UND has a nice hold on a large area of young players.